Anna Fuhrman

My most influential teacher was my middle school band teacher. Even at an age when

students tend to be rude and unmotivated, I always remember being excited for that class and felt

like I learned something new every day. She made sure to always give us extra opportunities to

become better musicians. For example, I was in flute ensemble throughout middle school, which

is an ensemble that not a lot of schools offer, and it was beneficial to me in becoming more

confident as a player and in learning more specifics about my instrument than we had time to

learn in a regular We also had an after school honor band, which allowed us to play much more

challenging music than in our regular band class. Being in this ensemble for two years helped me

to feel more prepared as a high school musician. In these ensembles, she allowed us to play

outside of just regular concerts, and we were able to travel to Hershey Park and DC on overnight

trips. I can only imagine how much planning a trip like that takes, but her hard work led to a lot

of great memories for all of her students.

There are a lot of qualities that I really admired about her as well. She was very well

organized in getting out important information to us and in how her classroom was set up, which

is something that I really appreciated. She also worked hard to try out new music, styles of

teaching, and ways to grade that made me feel like she genuinely cared about improving as a

teacher and helping us to improve as students. She had a good balance of being firm and

demanding of her students, while also being very supportive and encouraging.

Even after my experience in middle school, she was still a supportive teacher. When she

found out that I wanted to major in music education, she let me come back and work with the

flute ensemble and let me conduct a piece at their concert. Giving me this opportunity helped me
to feel more confident in choosing to go into music education and was really meaningful to me.

This was above and beyond her duties as a teacher and showed me that she really cared about